Sausage links are conventionally made on a sausage encasing machine wherein a meat emulsion is ejected into shirred casing or is coextruded with an exterior layer such as collagen gel, which forms a casing around the emulsion. The encased emulsion then passes through a linker, which twists or crimps the casing to form a strand of sausage links. The linking station deposits the strand of links onto conveyor hooks which engage the twists or crimps areas between links. The hanging links are then removed from the air conveyor hooks by the insertion of a smoking stick into the loops formed by the hanging links. The hanging orientation of the sausage links on the smoking sticks does not efficiently utilize space, since the hanging links are not closely spaced.
Therefore, a primary objective of the present invention is the provision of a conveying system for sausage links which collates the links in parallel rows.
Anther objective of the present invention is the provision of a sausage link conveyor which deposits the links in closely spaced parallel rows.
A further objective of the present invention is the provision of a method of conveying and collating sausage links cut from a strand of sausages.
These and other objectives will become apparent from the following description of the invention.